Parent-child conflict is a kind of interpersonal conflict. There are many reasons for interpersonal conflicts. Interpersonal conflict occurs when people who are related to each other are inconsistent or incompatible in attitude, motivation, values or practical actions. Parent-child conflict can be understood as tension, disharmony, hostility and even struggle between parents and offspring in parent-child communication.

As two different generations, parents and children have great differences in their mental knowledge and experience, and their understanding and feelings about things and problems are bound to be different. Parent-child conflict is inevitable, in fact, it is a kind of behavior type in various parent-child interaction States.

There are three main forms of parent-child conflict: verbal conflict, emotional conflict and physical conflict. Among them, the main forms of adolescent parent-child conflict are verbal and emotional conflicts, and the most intense is physical conflict. Parent-child conflict is characterized by its content, frequency, intensity and initiative. As for the content of parent-child conflicts, foreign studies have found that there are more conflicts in daily life arrangements, studies and housework, and fewer conflicts in friends and privacy. China's latest research also proves that the three most intense contradictions between teenagers and their parents are school work, daily life arrangement and housework in turn. The initiative of parent-child conflict refers to who initiated parent-child conflict. Domestic research draws a conclusion from the study of gender differences: girls have more conflicts with their mothers than with their fathers, while boys only show obvious differences in their daily lives, that is, boys have more conflicts with their mothers than with their fathers.